Hong Kong residents made 62.8 million trips to the Chinese mainland for business and leisure last year, bringing 24.1 billion HK dollars (3.11 billion U.S. dollars) of revenue to the mainland, the Census and Statistics Department said Monday (May 22).

Personal travels accounted for 64 percent of the entire trips, with business travels taking up the rest, according to the May issue of the Monthly Digest of Statistics, which features consumption expenditure of Hong Kong people traveling to the mainland in 2005.

Of the 40.1 million personal trips, 52 percent were destined for Shenzhen, 42 percent for other places in Guangdong Province and 6 percent to other provinces, suggesting much closer relations between Hong Kong and its neighboring Guangdong Province, the Census and Statistics Department said.

Average expenditure per trip was about 600 HK dollars. For overnight trips of personal travel, average expenditure per person was about 770 HK dollars, while that for same-day trips was around 290 HK dollars.

Editor: Wing